25+ Best Minimalist WordPress Themes (Updated 2016)

We often hear the phrase Less is more being repeated, ad infinitum. The trend started started in architecture and design a few decades ago, and has more into more areas. Design become one of the driving forces for commerce, as emphasis moved from aesthetics to functionality. Google can be seen as one of the aficionados with the minimalist design of a home page that featured not much more than a text box and a button. The late Steve Jobs emphasized it in the design of Apple products,

It slowly moved into areas such as webdesign, and there is even a lifestyle centered around minimalism.

With WordPress being the most popular CMS, it is very likely that designers will adopt the minimalist approach to theme design. However, with the popularity of minimalism, the need for functionality cannot be omitted, making the theme choice a bit more difficult. The following list is designed to help with your choice, and includes some of the best that we have found.

1. Ares

Ares is a uniquely designed WordPress theme, with an attractive appealing interface. It is fully responsive and renders well on almost every browser. The character that we find most appealing is the user friendly interface, that is emphasized by the full-width slider and lots of white spacing for the free-flowing and unpressured interaction. Despite being user-friendly, it still managed to maintin the professional persona, and Ares can be used for almost any type of business.

Users will appreciate the user-friendly aspect, and website owners will love the fact that the theme is easy to customize and can retain or increase visitor engagement with the myriad of attractive animations.

Ares is built with on the popular Bootstrap frame, and can help with SEO programs. The developers have been very generous with the features and tools that are included in the application.

Even beginners can build impressive sites as the application includes more than 600 fonts, Awesome icons, a contact form built with Ajax, support for the WooCommerce plugin, several templates, widgets and many more features.

Main Features

One-click installation

Easy customization

Supports WooCommerce

Ajax Contact Form

Nine color schemes

2. Milo

Milo allows almost anyone to quickly create an impressive looking site. Ideally suited for service-oriented businesses, the theme includes an unlimited number of portfolio pages that can easy to fill and publish. Made by Minimal has developed a theme that includes some really fine features,but they have also made it easy to use and maintain.

Milo is a fully responsive, with lean clean design, that is light on resources, yet includes very powerful options. For users with portfolios, such as photographers, designers, artists, and craftsmen, or even some tradesmen or women, the process of presenting portfolios cannot be much easier, and with Milo, it is done in way that is not overwhelming, but still very attract and appealing.

Creative use can be made of featurs such as the slideshow and image gallery on the homepage. Multiple editing features include the drag and drop editor, and ample area for descriptive texts and captions. There is a further customization available with the backgrounds, menus, and more photo-editing capability.

3. Divi

Divi is perhaps one of the more impressive and memorable WordPress themes to be published in recent periods. This is beneficial for a number of reason and mostly because your site can create a lasting impression on your visitors leading them to be more than likely to return. Simple in operation, yet sophisticated in appearance, Divi, can be used in almost any situation where material is to be presented online.

One of the useful features that the developers, Elegant Themes has included, is the Divi page builder tool, which is really easy to use. But what most users will love from the developers, is that with one payment you have access to 87 themes, and Divi is included in the set.

The interesting set of features include full-length page scrolling, full-width sliders, multiple icons, multiple headers and page layouts, and some beautiful typography. Along with your purchase of Divi, the developers also offer perpetual updates, and support is also available if and when needed.

4. Daily

Daily is a simplified minimalist theme, that is designed to work as a magazine, blog or news service. Many advanced features are included, and with the responsive design, it means that your site operation is clean and smooth, and the navigational architecture is very SEO friendly.

Daily theme includes many features to help with operation and maintenance of your site. Income generating opportunities are available with the selling of ad space and with the Ad management module it become much easier to manage ads by controlling positions duration costs along with the other features.

Several custom widgets and layout options are included, along with the customization of header and footer areas. There are a number of different templates for publishing magazine and newspapers, and these can be customized in any way that you like,by adding or removing elements, changing colors, fonts and other features without knowledge of any coding language.

Another interesting feature is the handy mega-menu builder, which offer easy and friendly site navigation, making for a SEO friendly site.

Main Features

Fully responsive design

Extensive documentation

Lightbox included

Customizable posting format

Content widgets

5. Sydney

There are several reasons why anyone would love the attractive theme from JustFreethemes.com, and one of the main reasons is because Sydney is free. It is a multipurpose theme that can be customized for any use. Adding your personal touch or preferences is easy many fantastic features are included to help owners create an attractive online presence.

In addition to more than 600 Google fonts, users are allowed full control of color and layout, and a full feature slider allows prominent display of products and or services.

Adding sticky posts and header images, with the full screen slider means that you can do almost anything you wish with this free theme, and several blocks are included for creating your front page in manner you wish. The only caveat, is that as with free themes support may be limited as there may be too many people who have downloaded it. But there may not be a better theme for the price.

If you are technically inclined and can handle it this theme is to for you. Sydney brings plenty of customization possibilities like access to all Google Fonts, full color control, layout control, logo upload, full screen slider, header image, sticky navigation and much more. Also, Sydney provides all the construction blocks you need to rapidly create an engaging front page.

6. Dorsey

Dorsey is a clean minimalist theme from the design team from MadebyMinimal. There are multiple reasons why it can be popular. It can be used for a number of different purposes, but there may emphasis on use as an easy method for displaying a portfolio, or perhaps several portfolios as multiple categories are included.

Dorsey is designed for easy operation, and operators, such as designers, and craftspeople can be online and operating with a minimum of resources being expended. Despite having a direct approach with minimal distractions, the theme includes some of the more powerful features that are almost essential to any online operation. The front page allows images to be shown either in thumbnail or full width view, and the visitor is given the option of the choice, by just a click.

The Built-in blogging application allows the portfolios and blog to be hosted one on site, and the blog posts can also feature images, different categories and widgets. There is also full search capability, and readers can be enticed to remain on your site as posts can be published with excerpts that feature a link for further details.

7. Tonal

There are some very interesting features included with the Tonal theme.One is the dynamic style that feature changes based on the page content. The color of the background can be varied with the type of content that is published. Full-width videos, as well as full width feature images can be posted, and because of the responsive design, rendering is easily done across most browsers.

There are multiple formats supported for posting, and one of the features that are often neglected is the links to archived material. This helps to retain visitor engagement, which is one of the characteristics enamored by the search engines. Editing your site is easy, as the powerful navigation features are included in the menu panel, which is opened with a click on the menu.

Despite having multiple handy features, navigation is easy, and with some simple changes, the typography can be modified, as backgrounds are modified. Other features of the appearance can also be easily be changed from the appearance menu item on the control panel.

8. Keratin

A clean a simple word press theme where the emphasis of each post can be a featured image.

The hover effect will introduce a larger version of the image, while the accompanying text can include more details of the image. The layout is called the Masonry layout as it resembles that done in the form of laying bricks. The bricks can be laid out in the form of a grid, or in a flat singular style.

Keratin can be quite suitable for publishing news items that are accompanied by photographs, or for displaying portfolios of photo-editing or design project items. The theme is simple and efficiently design in its use of space and resources.

Posts can be formatted in many variations, and the theme also supports multimedia files, with a simple embedding application. A contact form is also included, and there is easy access to the archives of earlier posts.

9. Glacier

There are hundreds of features that make Glacier, a minimalist and fully responsive WordPress theme developed by Bling Themes, an outstanding value. The layouts can be modified with addition of widgets, and all of the flexiblity is complimented by the inclusion of more than 600 fonts, and an unlimited number of color choices. You can even create your own color to be used where it may be considered appropriate.

There is also an opportunity to generate revenue from ad space, and three formats for banner posting is included.Because the theme is fully response there is actually no concern with the sizes of the banners when posting, as they are automatically resized with different screens, and always remain in proportion.

This theme is also a good parenting or mommy blogging theme as it has a slight minimalist, feminine look to it.

Page loading speed of Glacier has been tested to be among the top in similar themes of the same class, and with the purchase of a license, the developers will provide support for life.

Main Features

SEO Friendly

Multiple listing styles

Translation ready

Multiple listing options

Multiple widgets

Ad support

10. Minimalista

Minimalista is an attractive theme, that be easily adapted to build almost any brand. The clean minimal design is eye catching as most of the primary colors are simply white, black, and neutral gray. The simple elegant, yet professional approach can be suitable to audiences and visitors of almost any demographic, gender or purpose, as it is essential neutral. The differentiation will come in the content, and Minimalista, which is powered by Google’s Angular Java Script, is ideal for showcasing photographs or even eCommerce functions.

The theme makes it easy for multiple photos to appear on one page. With the minimal design, a simple click will load a new page. Click on any photo, and a full page image will be loaded in the screen.

Visitors are allowed to post comments and engagement is enhanced with the full-width slider.

With a multi-purpose theme such as Minimalista, there are multiple page templates and layouts, and all major social network items remain visible at all times, for easy sharing of content.

11. Volta

This is an unusually striking theme which is dedicated to showcasing video and photography in a seriously eye-catching way. Volta is a clean and modern WordPress Theme made with photographers and designers in mind. It is perfect to promote your works in a very professional and pleasant way. Volta portrays elegance and uniqueness in style

As soon as you land on the homepage, Volta immediately impresses thanks to its three homepage variations: image background, video background and slider background. Each variation offers a completely different look and feel to the theme, meaning that you can create a truly unique design.

As Volta is focused heavily on media, it is completely responsive, retina-ready and includes clean code, ensuring that your content looks its best.

Because the theme is so striking, it is likely to split opinion amongst both users and visitors, so think carefully about your audience’s ideal user experience before making a purchasing decision.

That said, if you’re looking for something unusual and eye catching, Volta will be sure to keep you and your visitors engaged.

Main Features

three homepage variations

Wide cross browser compatibility

Easy extensive customizability

12. Lux

Lux is a beautiful, but simple and mobile responsive theme from Press-Coders, who specialize in WordPress development. The simple and clean design is very effective and allows user to showcase products in a full-width slider. The images can be used as a background on each post, which can then be individually edited.

Images can be grouped together in categories, to form a slide-show, and using the options on the panel,the graphics can be edited as they seem necessary. Several options are available for managing the theme, such as adding a logo, or changing to associated branding with colors and or texts.

Developers offer free life-time support with the purchase of each theme.

Lux also supports some multimedia as posts background, and the slider also supports touch response. Six pre-packaged color schemes are included, and even more flexibility, is added with the color picked to provide unlimited color choices. Lux can also handle eCommerce operations, as Payment processors are easily enabled.

13. Elegant

The Elegant theme is minimalist theme, that still manages to be elegantly fancy. It does not include any accessories that are considered wasteful, such as overwhelming and distracting animations or useless graphics, but directs most of the attention to the content, and it is designed to be subtle.

It is a multi-purpose theme, but likely suited for sites with a focus on content, such as designers, portfolios, agencies, artists, and writers. The appealing appearance is derived from some beautiful typography, that includes an almost perfect balance between white spacing and texts.

Elegant is built on the robust Themify framework, and can be readily customized with the powerful Drag ‘n Drop builder, and there are many more tools included to help building the best site possible. Upload the demo that is included, and begin customizing by choosing of the six color skins, changing fonts, layouts, or an unlimited choice of colors. Headers for each post, can be styled, as well as the post format. The list of features is extensive, and almost all elements, from header to footer can be designed to your liking.

Main Features

Compatibility with WPML

Includes 600 + Google fonts

Supports WooCommerce

Automatically updated

One click demo installation

14. Gear

Gear was designed to work with the WooCommerce plugin, making one of the easy ways that anyone can begin selling online. The theme is user friendly, but advanced users will also love it bcause it include several handy features that make life much easier.

A full-width slider on the homepage will attract more visitors, and you are more like to keep them with the floating header, that remains in place while they scroll. The header will include the menu items for ready navigation to other areas of the site.

The responsive theme from ThemeTrust developers can also be customised, with a change of colors, fonts, headers, and even the background images. It can all be easily done with the built-in customiser, several additional plugins will help you even further. The developers attempt to outdo themselves with items such as the shortcodes plugin for adding more elements, and being compatible with the WPML, it means that you site can instantly be translated to other languages.

15. Spaces

Spaces is one of the themes that manages to combine a great set of features in a very attractive minimalist design. Not is the design efficient, but many of the tools included are some of the best that can be found.

Without any coding knowledge, Spaces make it easy to do a few special things. Setting up a store is easy, as the powerful WooCommerce plugin in included. There are several version of the theme from which to choose, which means that with a simple click, the look of your site can be changed with a full-width or carousel slider,or a grid or masonry frame. The Theme Customizer allows for easy changing of colors and fonts. Mix and match layouts for the posts, getting as creative as you wish, and it can be done seamlessly, and without worries.,

The eyecatching design is truly striking with the truly minimalist appearance, and extra plugin to post team members, and customer testinomials is also included. Adding regular updates, and fast loading to the features, produces a top of the class theme.

16. Modest

As the name implies, the Modest theme from Elegant themes, is really modest, without eliminating much of the functionality. The non-essential features have been removed, leaving ta basic that does what it was meant to do and nothing much more.

The theme includes several pre-designed templates that can be used for various such as galleries, search page, a sitemap, contact page and others. All that is needed is the addition of the content.

Additional theme management options are available in the ePanel interface where you can manage functions, such as the Navigation, Layout, and the color. Support for Search Engine Optimizing is also available with the module that allows editing of titles, and proper structuring of URLs, meta tags and keywords. Some pre-defined areas for banner placement are included, so your site retains the clean ordered and minimalist appearance.

The organised interface is efficiently maintained with the multitude of included shortcodes. It is easy to ad elements such as buttons, slides, columns, tool tips, and hidden content in divs and many more tips and tricks that help to maintain an really attractive and functional website.

17. Zoomy

Zoomy theme from Tesla Themes displays a free an easy feeling that encourages users to leisurely browse your site. This can be very encouraging for users with portfolios to display, such as photographers and artists. It is fully responsive and with the minimal design, the elements designed in black and white, are pleasing to the eye. The full-width slider is gentle on the eyes, with unobtrusive transitions, and there is no clutter, but content can be published in some prominent places.

Zoomy includes multiple layouts of several pages and applications such as the blog, that can be changed with a mouse-click. Seven pre-built pages, such as About-us, Portfolio, Services, an error page are all included, and can be readily published with related content.

Even more design help is available with the shortcodes for adding other elements, and with the activation of social network icons, it is ensured that your content can be shared to invite more site visitors.

18. Brutal

There is nothing Brutal about this theme from ZigZagPress, so is is best that the name be ignored. Brutal is a strikingly minimalist designed theme, with a lot of flexibility, and powerful features. The uncomplicated appearance, is pronounced by the simple fonts, but the interesting animations will help to keep your visitors engaged.

The menu items and slider images are activated with hover effect requiring less effort., but the Genesis Framework, on which the the is built also allows for much deeper customizability. Rich animation is handled with minimal use of resources, and can actually help with more browsing or eCommerce, when the WooCommerce plugin is activated.

Posts can be published in multiple formats that include audio and video and texts, and what is pronounced with the responsive design, is the easy transitions between different devices. Infinite scroll feature, means that all page contents can be read with minimal finger movement. This feature, although seemingly insignifcant can be very useful on mobile devices, antd the attention to detail is what makes this theme popular.

19. Concept

Easy transitioning of images in the full-width slider is one of the outstanding features of this impressive theme from Aivah Themes. It is a simple and lightweight theme, that includes an extensive list of features. Concept is a multi-use theme, that is suited for a range of activities, such as a portfolio,a blog, charitable organisations, and even business activity, as it supports eCommerce.

Designed with SEO in mind, navigation is intuitive, and with the powerful features such sliders, unbtrusive sidebars, portfolio pages, all of the requirements for building a top-rated site are readily available. Diversity and flexibility comes with more than 600 Google fonts, a color designer,unlimited portfolio pages, seven widgets and tons of shortcodes for publishing content and page elements.

Another interesting feature, along with the starkly unique design,is the parallax viewing that produces some animation effect without the use of resources. The drag and drop page builder makes page design an even more pleasant experience.

20. Alice

If you operate an agency of any kind, or do freelance services, then you should love this strikingly, beautiful responsive theme from Bluxart. Alice is distinctive with an emphasis on imagery and some of the most compelling animations that help to create one of the most pleasurable online experiences. Your portfolio is displayed in customizable prominent full-screen video on the front page.

Customizing this theme is an easy process, as it was built on the popular Bootstrap Framework, along with elements of CSS3 and HTML5. The developers have also included support for multimedia format, with easy embedding of audio and video files. Flexibility in styling is offered by several font packages of Linicons, Font-Awesome, Entypo among others, and there is even more customization with multiple layouts and custom or video backgrounds. Alice can be used as a child theme, and with the advanced features, you can take it in any direction you wish.

Set categories with different portfolios, and they can all have seperate layouts, and individual filters. The Creative Modal allows much more creatvity with displaying portfolios, and the customizability can also be extended to the blog for different layouts and posting formats.

21. Better

Better is one of those straightforward, down to business themes, that wastes very little time or space. It still manages to include many of the features found in premium themes, such a a visual composer, an expanive list of pre-designed shortcodes that can be used for content publishing. It would highly recommended for a classic and simple theme, that still is functional. There is not much that can be termed as bells and whistles, but the theme is favored because of the styling, and the useful features.

Additional functionality includes pre-defined pages, styling options, and a customizabile blog. Elements are added to the pages with the enclosed shortcodes, and the developers Krownthemes, offer a level of support that many users say is unparalled. Users are granted access to a support forum, and a knowledge base that can only be expected to grow as the user base expands. The combination of horizontal or vertical tabbed pages, and accordian style posting is another interesting user-friendly feature that will attract some attention.

Main Features

Classic design

Fully responsive

Retina ready

Includes Page builder

Extensive list of shortcodes

Unlimited portfolios

22. ROUA

ROUA adds a contemporary minimalist design to some outstanding features such as video backgrounds and attractive animation features, to create what can be described as glossy stylish theme. The devlopers, StylishThemes, have paid a lot of attention to detail and include a heady list of some of the most desired features required for maintaining and effective online presence.

Three styling options are available, and with the attractive design of the blog, it is likely to become a talking point that encourages return visits. Full featured images, and parallax view scrolling can be presented as backgrounds for excerpts of articles. The excerpts can be be used to direct users to detailed pages. ROUA is compatible with WooCommerce plugin, and designed to be SEO friendly.

The effective use of AJAX improves the customer UX, and the changelog shows that the developers are regularly updating the theme, while also covering a wide range of support issues. It can be expected that ROUA will continue to improve as the customer feedback grows, and developers respond accordingly.

23. Trail

Trail is a uniquely designed that that can be dedicated for use as a portfolio. It is described as being clean, bold and stylish, and surprisingly is still manages to be somewhat subtle in its presentation. Some of the stylishness comes from the typography, which involves and extensive set of fonts that can be chosen to compliment the imagery. The design all appears to mesh seamlessly with the content, and all elements such as social media icons, buttons and even some of the animations all blend together for an exciting user experience.

The Home page features an attractive parallax view, full-screen with vertical scrolling, and although the theme has a heavy focus on images, it still loads fairly fast without heavy lagging. Trail comes with shortcodes and theme customizing Trail does not require intensive efforts, as the package includes an impressive list of shortcodes, for the managing of page elements.

24. Brazil

Brazil introduces what many believe to be the ultimate in UX. The design is described as being ultra responsive, and the the theme includes some of the most desired features for efficient site operation. The result is an attractively designed site that includes a full set of features, operating flawlessly across a varied number of devices.

The starting point, is any one of three variations of the theme that goes from magazine style, multipage, or even a one-page option. Using the Drag n- Drop interface builder, you can easily build on the platform, with as much creativity as you can possibly use. The Visual Composer Drag n Drop feature is one of the premier features of the theme, as it faciltates effective webdesign without coding.

The designers, Webnus have also included five separate header styles, and more than 1200 fonts and icons to offer maximum flexibility in customisation and design. They also offer custom color skins, with the opportunity to create remarkable site designs.

25. Saurez

Suarez is a premium multipurpose theme, with a remarkable list of features. The default application includes an almost overwhelming choice of 50 different styles for the homepage, and the design team to help with editing them as would like.

Suarez is also fully compatible with plugin like WooCommerce to easily build a virtual storefront that can be easily translated to popular languages when the WPML plugin is installed and activated. There is no limit to the range of colors that can be used, with the widgts that are loaded into sidebars.

The theme may include any of the best WordPress plugins that may be needed, and you may even begin by installing a demo with one-click. If you become stuck with any technical issues, some assistance is always available with the video-tutorials that are hosted online.

As a multi-purpose theme, the styling and design can be effective in attracting more visitors, but both visitors and users will appreciate the parallax image viewing, along with almost flawless response.

Main Features

Responsive

fullwidth or Boxed layout options – This can be set globally or even per page!

Built on Twitter Bootstrap –

Slider Revolution included – This theme includes the Slider Revolution plugin, saving you $19